Glancing at his watch now, Bryan slid off the stool and went to a telephone alcove. He dialed a number quickly. There was a delay while an extension connection was made.
"Dave?" he said, then. "Terry at this end. How's the patient?"
"Dead, Terry. Not half an hour ago. We tried everything—oxygen, heart stimulants. It was no use. I knew it was going to happen all along and stayed to do what I could. I was just getting ready to go home."
"I checked up on the others who were found in the park," Bryan resumed. "They died, too. In about the same length of time as your patient."
"Good Lord, Terry! It ... it's horrible somehow. What in the name of reason could be back of it?"
"I'm working on that angle right now. I'll let you know if I turn up anything.... Thanks, Dave." Bryan hung up and went back to the bar. He finished his drink, lighted a cigarette, and strode outside.
Darkness had thickened along the street, a soft warm darkness, rich with the promise of approaching summer. A block's walk brought Bryan to the boulevard. Grant Park lay just across from him, lights shining fairy-like throughout its shadowed length.
He crossed with the traffic light, hands in his pockets, a man just strolling along on a pleasant evening. But his gray eyes were alert and grim. Vivid in his mind was the memory of a man in a hospital bed, a man who breathed and yet was not alive.
The park swallowed him. He walked directly toward the memorial pavilion, moving without haste, without apparent purpose or destination.
The pavilion took shape in the quiet gloom, a temple-like place of flowerbeds and radiating walks. On the benches around it was a scattering of romantic couples and lonely men sprawled in sleep. The atmosphere was one of serenity and peace. To Bryan it seemed briefly incredible that danger could threaten here. Yet in this vicinity three men had been struck down by something that had left them mere shells of flesh without the will to live.